probabilityfields

Today I searched for Bedtime For Bonzo, got a link to RottenTomatoes.com and saw a quote from a review that said,

“Literally the greatest thing Ronald Reagan ever did” — Gregory Weinkauf, NEW TIMES.

I promptly shit my pants.

…
Also, with a little help from Jeff James, I made a website for my buddies who are in a band called Hard Knox and the Heads. CHECK IT OUT, FOOL!

…
Meanwhile, I’ve got papers to write. The rest of my 20-30-pager is due tomorrow, and a 6-8-pager on Thursday. But am I really a slacker if I’m still doing stuff? I mean, I made that website, I played my guitar, and I thought deeply about a lot of heavy shit. From here on out, I renounce the label ’slacker’. I am ‘doer-of-whatever-I-feel-like-doing-and-doing-it-well’, goddamnit!

Last night we built a robot at my house.

We became friends. Starting from left: Tony, Beau, Robot, Aaron.

But then Aaron made a racist joke against robots. He got angry and blew up our kitchen.

I finally bought Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For More Food, the sequel to I’m Just Here For the Food, which I stole from the SU Library years ago. Brown’s second installment is all about baking, which is why I hesitated to buy it. That is until I started making my own pasta and realized working with dough can be fun. So now that I’ve got the book I only have to find the time to apply its genius to a loaf of bread. Maybe after a while I’ll even try out pies, biscuits…fuck it, scones!

To anyone who enjoys cooking, I recommend both of these books along with Brown’s show on the Food Network Good Eats, which you can find sandwiched somewhere between Emeril and any other useless cooking show. I have almost every episode of Good Eats on my computer. Yeah, I’m that fuckin’ cool.

I’ll let you know if I ever find the time to bake anything…right now I’ve got ten pages of philosophy paper to write in twelve hours. Wish me luck!

The Cowboys won last night after coming back from a 20-7 deficit against their bitter rivals, the Philadephia Eagles. The comeback happened in the fourth quarter with three minutes left when the Cowboys scored two touchdowns within the span of 21 seconds. This ties the Cowboys with the 1st place New York Giants in the NFC East.

But this was just another exciting night in an autumn that has seen the Astros reach their first World Series and the Longhorns go undefeated on a trek to the National Championship at the Rose Bowl. Granted, fair-weather fandom is generally frowned upon, but seriously, how could you live in Texas and not be a sports fan right now?

Roy Williams points a sympathetic finger

at the devastated Eagles fans.

Well, I tried, but the conservative Christians won. That is, Proposition 2 passed and now gay people can’t get married in Texas. Oh wait, they couldn’t before. Hmm…so I guess all that changed is that common law marriages are null and void. So no longer can I introduce someone as “my wife” to three people and be de facto married. Too bad.

But why were all those conservative Christians so upset over common law marriage? Or…maybe they were just hateful people. Hey I got it! Let’s have an election to ban gay marriage every year! It’ll be a celebration of our hatred for those fuckers!

I first heard this song when Jeff James and I watched the video for it on MTV2’s new show Subterranean. The show is not as good as 120 Minutes, for those of you who remember, but what the hell is these days? I don’t even think I have MTV2 at my house, but lord knows I only watch HBO, PBS, and the Food Network here.

The video was for The Mountain Goats “This Year”. It’s one of the better videos I’ve ever seen, doesn’t distract from the song. I get annoyed by most videos; I think what little thought I put into them is slighty more than most music video directors put in to them, ha!

One example is Nada Surf’s new video for “Always Love”. I love this song, but not always, i.e. when it’s from their video, which sucks. The band just plays their instruments without any feeling, barely moving their lips. When I hear the song I picture them playing live to an enthusiastic crowd (or maybe I picture myself playing…anyway). This video ruins the song for me. But I’ll just have to forget about the damn video.

“This Year” on the other hand is a great song and a great video. Its theme is underplayed and interesting if you want it to be. The most surprising element is the band’s singer whose acting carries across the song just as well as his voice.

Of course the video is but a mere advertisment for the song, which is a Springsteen-esque anthem, rife with automotive metaphors and expressions like “A girl named Cathy wants a little of my time.” The music is simple, driving acoustic guitar, piano, bass, light drums, vocals that sound like the guy from Flogging Molly without the accent. I recommend a listen/view, here’s the video.

My favorite part:
“And then Cathy showed up and we hung out.
Trading swigs from the bottle all bitter and clean
locking eyes, holding hands,
twin high-maintenance machines.
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.”

I finally saw Last Days tonight and I gotta say that I liked it a lot. It’s not just because I’m an old Nirvana fan, or that I love weird, slow movies because they make other people think I’m smart. I liked it 1) because it lets me know what Gus is trying to do in both this film and his previous film Elephant, and 2) I like what that is.

To get at what I think is going on, let’s trace out the commonalities of these two films. First, they both deal with real life events surrounding people on the margins of society* that end in violence and death. More importantly, both events became media circuses. Years later, every moviegoer knows the story surrounding these events. Of course that statement is not entirely true. We have our own interpretation that we’ve pieced together from the news media’s interpretation.

But Gus isn’t out to set the record straight. In fact, he’s very straight-forward about the films being inspired by, but not based on actual events. Furthermore, there are inaccuracies in both films that make it obvious that Gus doesn’t care too much about what really happened. Rather, Gus is making claims about the way we make interpretations of events.

By slowing down the action, forcing us to focus on the banality that haunts even the life of a rockstar or a murderer, and the absurdity of the tragic events, Gus asks us to compare his thought-experiment-on-film with our mediated interpretation of the events. The result is that the two films seem boring, yet more probable. Gus resists sensationalism to the point that renders the films unwatchable to some.

Last Days also beg comparison with similar biopics. The Doors for example, glorifies Morrison, omitting his faults, elevating him to god-status, thereby dooming more than a few misguided kids to ill-conceived drug experimentation**. Last Days on the other hand, is subtlely critical of Cobain’s self-destruction. He appears as a buffoon at times with pratfalls abound (how can anyone not be entertained by this?), and what seem to be his friends are a pack of ne’er-do-wells who ne’er do care much about Kurt. (This kind of judgment, if I remember correctly, is a stylistic step away from Elephant.)

To conclude, I believe Gus’s message is not confined to the totality of each film, but extends and blossoms within the gap it illuminates between a film like Last Days and the interpretation provided by the news media / gossip / Hollywood / blogosphere.

*When I say Kurt Cobain was on the margins of society I mean 1) that he seemed to be largely misunderstood by society, and 2) that he was a heroin addict. The film’s portrayal of his life presents discrepencies between MTV’s Cobain and the real Cobain. I don’t think the real Cobain would have been quite so popular with his fans.

**Okay, so I watched the first half of The Doors on acid back in high school.